The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Source Catalog

TL;DR

This paper presents the WMAP 5-year point source catalog, identifying 390 sources with high confidence, analyzing their properties, variability, and correlation with known radio sources, enhancing understanding of microwave sky sources.

Contribution

The paper provides the most complete WMAP point source catalog to date, including a new CMB-free source search and variability analysis, improving source identification and characterization.

Findings

Catalog includes 390 sources with SNR > 4.7

99 sources identified in CMB-free V-W maps, mostly known radio sources

Many sources exhibit significant year-to-year variability

Abstract

We present the list of point sources found in the WMAP 5-year maps. The technique used in the first-year and three-year analysis now finds 390 point sources, and the five-year source catalog is complete for regions of the sky away from the galactic plane to a 2 Jy limit, with SNR > 4.7 in all bands in the least covered parts of the sky. The noise at high frequencies is still mainly radiometer noise, but at low frequencies the CMB anisotropy is the largest uncertainty. A separate search of CMB-free V-W maps finds 99 sources of which all but one can be identified with known radio sources. The sources seen by WMAP are not strongly polarized. Many of the WMAP sources show significant variability from year to year, with more than a 2:1 range between the minimum and maximum fluxes.